Thursday, April 30, 2015

The synagogue of al-Ghriba is all set to welcome thousands of visitors on 6 and 7 May 2015 for the annual Lag Ba' Omer pilgrimage. The Tunisian government seems particularly keen to show it has taken all necessary security precautions, according to Tunis Afrique Presse. Not only has the synagogue been a target of a terrorist attack in 2002, but 21 tourists were gunned down at the Bardo Museum in March.

Tunis — Minister of the Interior Mohamed Najem Gharsalli, on Friday,
said his department has taken appropriate measures to ensure the success
of the pilgrimage to El Ghriba, Djerba scheduled from May 6 to 7, 2015.

"The ministry has prepared the security reinforcements needed for the
success of this event," he indicated at a meeting, attended by
ambassadors of Algeria, France, Russia, USA, Italy, Japan, United
Kingdom, South Africa, Czech Republic, Spain, China, Netherlands and
Canada.

The Synagogue of El Ghriba, which was the scene of a terrorist attack in 2002, hosted nearly 2,500 pilgrims in 2014.

Mr. Gharsalli said all precautions have been taken to protect the residents and visitors in their travel and stay in Tunisia.

The government will be represented at this event by several
ministers, including the Ministers of the Interior and Tourism, to show
its commitment to the success of the pilgrimage season and to rooting
out terrorism.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

This article by Ameen Al-Mumaiiz from his book, Baghdad as I know it (1930), gives a fascinating insight, through the eyes of a Muslim, into how Iraqi Jews were at the forefront of modernising the country. It must be emphasised, however, that the Jewish upper classes were a small percentage of the community as a whole, most of whom, as per the autobiographies of Nissim Rejwan and Salim Fattal, were poor. Thanks to Ivy Vernon for her translation.

"The Iraqi Jews ate the most expensive and rare of fruits and vegetables. As soon as the fruit is available in the market, the Iraqi Jew would buy it no matter how expensive.

He eats a healthy( kosher) meat and chicken diet checked by the Rabbi - this in obedience to religious edicts which orders them to thank God for the first season fruits, as well as to check the slain animal that no bones are broken and that it is free from any infectious diseases.

The majority of the Jews wear the best quality clothes sewn by the superior Baghdadi tailors (Armenians, Muslims, Jewish or Farma the Indian) to celebrate their festivals as per the Torah edicts.
Most of them ..............celebrate in their houses with the best foods, like the fatty chicken breasts and sweets (Haiwwa).

The Jewish man will frequent the best snack bars and cafes in Baghdad with names like the River Cafe, al Basha, Shabandar, Moshe, and Mummaiiz Cafe, where he can relax and be entertained, as well as make business deals. He does not care how much he pays to the owner of the snack bar.

They own the best clubs in Baghdad, as well as the high class ones i.e. Al Rashid, Laura Kaddouri. These are exclusively Jewish and no-one else is allowed to join.

They also have the schools with the highest standards, both primary and secondary: The Alliance, Shamash and Frank Iny schools, so that sending their kids to finish their higher education in the American or European universities can be achieved easily with no problem, conditions or limitations.

If, for example, an Iraqi Jew needs to defend himself in court, he can bring in the best lawyers from abroad (as seen in the case of the extremely well off Mr Shemmail Jemaila) when he brought in Mr Parkiton-Ward, the famous English lawyer to do so.

The Jews use the most luxurious and pedigree milking cows, handle the rarest of domestic birds, the parrots, canaries and love birds.
They were the first to import American cars into Iraq - for example the Ford agents were Ibrahim and Shafiq Ades.

The agents for General Motors were the Lawee brothers.
They appreciate the nutritional value of the Nabeq (tiny soft fruit from trees), the manna,Jammar (from wood in the trees), roasted beetroots, and they will pay whatever price to get them.
The Jews will only buy live fish and buy it directly from the (supplier or fisherman?).

They will put up their summer tents on the riverside only in the best locations like the A'Athamiyyah beach and Al Kahouriya. They only left when threatened by Nu'man al A'thami, as he was afraid they were plotting to make the area all Jewish.

The Jewish Rabbi was the most skilled in circumcision and many Muslim families resorted to using his skills to circumcise their boys.

For foreign languages, the best teachers were Jewish, for example Shummail for Fench and Heskel Effendi for the English language.
The best swimming instructors were Jewish at Said Sultan's Organization and the teacher Saffani was the most able.

The majority of the merchants who imported the hygienic artefacts and instruments from abroad were Jewish... Salem Shamoun introduced the bathtub and the boiler to bathrooms. The Shasha family imported the variety of cloths in the Saffaffir warehouse.
The Hakkak family imported the "Singer" sewing machines, the gramaphones "Lady's voice", and "Pythaphone" records."

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

French media have revealed that students at at least two high
schools in Tunisia, the land where the Arab Spring began, have marked their sports days with huge banners in support of Hitler and Islamic State (Da'esh). Are the students acting out of ignorance or conviction? (With thanks: Eliyahu)

In Tunisia, "Islamofascism" is not merely a media formula. It can take on a quite concrete appearance. . . .;At
the high school in Jendouba in the northeast of the country, a banner
showing Hitler saluting the German flag was displayed. (France TV - Geopolis)

In another high school in the area of Jendouba, it was the black flag of the Islamic State that was put on display. . . . . (France TV - Geopolis)

In
the girls high school of Kairowan (LJFK), the religious center of
Tunisia, a banner showing a representation of the persecutions of the
Islamic State was hung on a wall. One can see on it a masked warrior
armed with a scimitar accompanied by two prisoners dressed in the
typical orange pajama. One of them in flames might represent the
Jordanian pilot burned alive by Da`ash [ISIL] last February. (Le Figaro, 15 April 2015)

Blogger Eliyahu M'Tsiyon comments:
"The article in Le Figaro looks for an excuse why many in the Arab world are
so fascinated with Hitler. And the reporter finds a false reason:
"The fascination for the 3rd Reich is not rare in the Arab countries, which
did not undergo the trauma of Nazism and are gladly hostile to Israel."

"This reason is false because in fact Nazi German troops, the Wehrmacht, did
occupy Tunisia in late 1942 and early 1943. The Jews there were
subjected to the preliminary stages of the Holocaust while mass murder
camps were being built in North Africa. In fact, Walter Rauff, the Nazi
expert in murdering Jews spent several months in Tunisia. Read excerpts
from his reports to his superiors and diaries here."

Monday, April 27, 2015

Who knew? This report (Arabic - sorry, no English subtitles) on a London screening of the film 'Shadow in Baghdad' appeared on Iraqi TV. The screening was organised by the Meir Basri Forum. Some 80 people attended - mainly Iraqi Muslims and Christians. The Meir Basri Forum was founded by an Iraqi Jew and a Shi'a Muslim in 2010.

The film tells the story of Linda Menuhin Abdul-Aziz, whose lawyer father disappeared in Baghdad in 1972, presumed murdered by the regime. An Iraqi Muslim journalist offers to help Linda trace her father's last movements. Linda achieves closure of sorts, and her faith in humanity is reaffirmed.

The TV channel Al-Hurra has also been interviewing Linda Menuhin and Duki Dror, the film's director, an Israeli of Iraqi origin.

Images of the terrible hangings of nine Jews on 27 January 1969 fill the screen.

What is interesting is that the Arab media is engaging with Iraqi Jews who now live in Israel and carry Israeli passports.

Linda's story may elicit sympathy from an Arab audience, but have they really come to terms with the fact that Iraqi Jews have moved on? These Jews do not yearn to return to the Iraqi motherland, but are now citizens of the West and of Israel. Their children may still speak some Arabic and enjoy the music and the food, but they are firmly established in their new countries.

At last, the story of the oppression and flight of the Iraqi Jews is reaching a mainstream Arab audience - surely, a miraculous development.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Why is there no Ma'abarot Day to recall the first home - a tent camp - that 80 percent of Israel's oriental immigrants experienced when they first arrived? Article in Haaretz:

An odd question is posed by the protagonist of the television series
“Zagouri Empire,” in the first episode of the new season. Why, he asks,
does the Israeli calendar have no “Ma’abarot Day” – a reference to the
1950s’ transit camps that mainly housed Jewish refugees from the Middle
East and North Africa.

You won’t find an entry for ma’abarot in the
Encyclopedia Hebraica. The 1978 edition contains a terse discussion of
the subject (27 lines), but not as a separate entry, rather in the
general volume devoted to the Land of Israel.

Nor do we have a “Museum of Ma’abarot.” We have an
Israel Air Force museum and a Yitzhak Rabin museum and a Palmach museum
and a Ya’ir Stern museum (commemorating the founder of the pre-state
underground organization Lehi). But to learn about transit camps, you’ll
have to poke around in archives or listen to old wives’ tales.

In a collection of Davar Le’Yeladim – the weekly
children’s magazine published by the (now-defunct) Hebrew daily Davar,
which was a mouthpiece for the ruling establishment – from 1951-1952, I
found barely 15 articles on the subject, most of them written by young
readers themselves.

Who is responsible for constructing our history?
Who is charged with the role of filling with content that odd and
self-interested concept referred to as “collective memory”?

When it comes to subjects like transit camps and
poverty, this is not only a question for learned historians. Recent
surveys have provided painful findings about the number of poor children
in Israel. A heated debate has also arisen about who’s responsible for
the fact that housing prices have lurched out of control – Benjamin
Netanyahu or Ehud Barak, or maybe it was the other Ehud (Olmert), or
possibly Menachem Begin, Golda or Ben-Gurion?

Perhaps the question should be rephrased: Who is
responsible for the fact that there are some people who have no prospect
of being able to buy an apartment today, whereas others own entire
buildings? That’s a question that calls for a consideration of the
history of poverty in this country.

The history of poverty here is a huge blank. Our
great cultural repression. The ma’abarot, the product of Israeli
poverty, are a historical wound that’s been removed from the map. And
not by chance.

In 1951, a quarter of a million people were living
in ma’abarot, 80 percent of them from Islamic lands. Most of the camps
were dismantled by 1959. Ten forgotten years. Memories erased.

Here, in a nutshell, are a few important points
which are apparently inconvenient to recall. The first inhabitants of
the ma’abarot lived in tents, one per family. Afterward, an improved
tent, hut-shaped but still made of canvas, came on the scene. Later,
there were tin huts and wooden shacks. Some of the ma’abarot weren’t
hooked up to the water or power supply, and filthy public toilets often
served dozens of people.

In April 1949, Zalman Aranne, a leading member of
the Mapai ruling party (and later minister of education), warned that a
“catastrophic situation” existed in the camps. Elihayu Dobkin, a senior
figure in the Jewish Agency, described the conditions as a “holy
horror.” But David Ben-Gurion ruled that the improved dwellings that
were being demanded for the new immigrants were too costly: “I don’t
accept this pampering [approach] with respect to people not living in
tents. We are spoiling them. People can live for years in tents. Anyone
who doesn’t want to live in them needn’t bother coming here.”

Beginning in September 1949, the Jews of Poland
were allowed to immigrate to the nascent Jewish state. Toward the end of
that year, the Agency reached the conclusion that the new arrivals from
Poland deserved better absorption conditions than the immigrants who
preceded them. “There are respected individuals among them,” was its
explanation.

To spare these newcomers the suffering of the
transit camps, it was proposed to house them in hotels. At the same
time, meetings were held among the authorities about speeding up the
Poles’ placement in permanent housing – including in apartments
originally allocated for immigrants from the Arab countries.

“They were all aware that giving preference to the
Polish immigrants was wrong and so they resolved to keep it secret,”
wrote historian Tom Segev in his book “1949: The First Israelis.”

In January 1953, the Agency’s Immigrant Absorption
Department in Jerusalem noted, “Most of the European families have long
since left the ma’abarot, and more than 90 percent of the camps’
inhabitants are from the Oriental communities.”

During the past month I’ve been visiting distressed
areas in Israel – the winter 2015 version. Every morning I arrive in a
different place. Kfar Shalem, Ofakim, Or Yehuda, Ramle, the long and
depressing tenements of Jaffa Dalet. Distressed neighborhoods of Israeli
Jews. Happily, I haven’t seen especially harsh sights.

The images I had
in my mind of the ma’abarot and other sorts of immigrant camps have
been shattered. At the end of the 1970s, Project Renewal was launched to
rehabilitate rundown neighborhoods, and outwardly the situation has
over the years become fairly reasonable. But many of the people I’m
meeting are unemployed; a great many lead hardscrabble lives.

It seems to me that before we talk about the
distress of the retail price of Milky, the chocolate pudding snack that
symbolizes the middle class, we should recall this country’s distressed
neighborhoods.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Who, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians? These words were spoken by one A. Hitler in 1938, as he embarked on another genocide. On the centenary of the Armenian genocide, Stephen Smith in Jewish Journal reports on a joint Jewish-Armenian project to record oral histories before the last survivors die off.

As the Jewish community knows very well, denial is the final act of
genocide. It excuses killers, obfuscates victims and deeply hurts
survivors and their families. It is an insult to the living and the
dead; cowardly, weak and harmful. Genocide is never a matter of opinion;
it is a matter of fact. The Armenian community has been hurting too.
Just imagine if the government of the United States denied that the
Holocaust was the genocide of the Jews.

The Jewish community and the Armenian community have much in common.
They are both clearly identifiable ethnic groups, both of whom have a
homeland, yet with more people living in diaspora than in the homeland
itself. They each have a specific language, history and, of course,
food. They also both have genocide in living memory.

Jews and Armenians therefore hold a common responsibility. Each
understands well the enduring pain and consequence of genocide. The fact
that they have different backgrounds, different religions and
traditions, and went through vastly different experiences makes the
point all the more clearly: that genocide can visit any of us, at any
time and we all need to be vigilant. How powerful when two communities
speak together with one voice on behalf of humanity.

As the last few centenarians who survived the genocide die, Armenians
face the challenge of living memory transitioning into history. Los
Angeles resident Yevnige Salibian at 102 is one of the last, but as
sharp as she is, there is not much she can say about her experiences
during the genocide, as she was a child at the time.

That’s just one reason why the USC Shoah Foundation and the Armenian
Film Foundation have come together to digitize and preserve more than
400 testimonies of survivors and experts on the Armenian genocide
collected by J. Michael Hagopian, a filmmaker who survived the Armenian
genocide. Those testimonies can be seen alongside the 53,000 testimonies
of witnesses to the Holocaust. Testimony is revenge. It puts the truth
in the hands of the eyewitness and resists denial. Even when justice
cannot be done, there is poetic justice in the freedom to speak, to have
the final word, to leave truth in the hands of future generations. The
first 60 testimonies of Armenian witnesses are online at USC Shoah
Foundation to mark the anniversary. Their voice thereby takes its place
in the collective conscience.

Friday, April 24, 2015

The Ayatollahs cannot claim credit for the Golden Age of Iranian Jews under the Shahs. Indeed they are peddling a rosy picture of Iranian-Jewish history that has no bearing in reality, argues Shahrzad Elghanian, the grand-daughter of Habib Elghanian (pictured), the community head and businessman executed in 1979. Interestingly, Elghanian had already irked a Shi'a cleric by building Tehran's tallest building, in defiance of traditional dhimmi rules. Article in the Washington Post (with thanks: Lily):

Until Iran’s leaders decide to get their facts straight about Jews,
they should stay quiet on the subject. No, I’m not talking about former
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denying antics. These
days, as Iran’s leaders try to soften their image to seal a deal to limit the country’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions, they’re peddling a revised and rosy version of Iran’s own 2,600-year Jewish history.

Asked
by NBC’s Ann Curry during recent talks in Switzerland whether Iranian
leaders understand why Jews have been wary of their rhetoric, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said,
“We have a history of tolerance and cooperation and living together in
coexistence with our own Jewish people, and with — Jews everywhere in
the world.”

That’s not quite right. Iran’s Jews did have
something of a golden age relatively recently, but Zarif, in his role as
representative of a regime that eschews pre-revolutionary Iran, can’t
take credit for it. That era was a brief period when the conservative
Shiite clergy were stripped of their power — after the Constitutional
Revolution of 1906 gave Iranians of all religions and ethnicity equal
rights, and before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in 1979.

Jews
have lived in Iran since 586 B.C. In the 16th century, conservative
Shiite scholars and clergy under the Safavid dynasty had restrictions
placed on all minorities, including Jews, to bar them from economic
activity and to prevent them from passing their “ritual impurity” to
Muslims: Don’t open shops in the bazaar, don’t build attractive
residences, don’t buy homes from Muslims, don’t give your children
Muslim names, don’t use Muslim public baths, don’t leave your house when
it rains or snows, don’t touch anything when entering Muslim shops.
Jews weren’t protected by the legal criminal system, but they could
convert on the spot to save their lives if attacked by Muslims. There
were short periods of reprieve here and there but as a whole, life was
pretty grim for the next several centuries. (For more on Jewish history
in Iran, see Houman Sarshar’s “Esther’s Children.”)

Late in the 19th century,
French and British Jews lobbied to establish schools for Jews, and
eventually Iranian-Jewish philanthropists, with the help of Israeli
organizations, funded a network of schools in the country. After Reza
Shah founded the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, he started a modernizing spree
in which Jews participated and prospered. By 1979, according to David Sitton’s study of Sephardic Jewish communities,
80 percent of Iran’s estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Jews were middle class
or higher, and 10 percent were part of the economic elite. Jews were
not only successful businessmen, but also prominent university
professors, journalists and doctors.

It
was during that window of relative Jewish affluence that my grandfather
Habib Elghanian, born in 1912, became one of Iran’s most famous
industrialists, after he and his brothers introduced the plastics
industry to the country in the late 1940s. In 1959, he was elected the chairman of the country’s Jewish association.
Still,
some members of the clergy were uncomfortable that a Jew had become so
successful. In 1962, when my family built the country’s first private
sector high-rise, the 17-story Plasco Building in Tehran, Shiite cleric
Mahmoud Taleghani objected to the idea that a Jew had built the tallest
building of its time in Iran.

Khomeini’s protests went further
than Taleghani’s. Khomeini railed against the White Revolution, a series
of economic and social reforms Reza Shah’s son Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
started in 1963. His attacks on the shah’s modernization efforts were
also aimed at Israel, Jews and Baha’is. “The shah takes so many of his
cues from Israel that we wonder if he is not a Jew himself,” Khomeini
said during one speech against the reforms. In a 1964 address, Khomeini
offered his antidote to westernizing Iran. “The objective is Islam,” he
said. “It is the country’s independence; it is the proscription of
Israel’s agents; it is the unification of Muslim countries. The entire
country’s economy now lies in Israel’s hands; that is to say it has been
seized by Israeli agents. Hence, most of the major factories and
enterprises are run by them.” That speech singled out two people in
particular: One was my grandfather, and the other was a famous Baha’i
industrialist, Habib Sabet.

When
Khomeini returned from exile in February 1979 as the head of the
Islamic revolution, my grandfather was among the first civilians he went
after. On May 9, 1979, my grandfather was executed after a 20-minute
trial on trumped-up charges that included being a “Zionist spy.” The
Revolutionary Court did not allow my grandfather to have a lawyer. After
a firing squad killed him, the new regime stole what he had spent his
lifetime building. (Most of the rest of my family had already left Iran
by then.) The execution prompted Sen. Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.) to sponsor a
resolution condemning human rights abuses in Iran – which would prove
to be a key moment in souring diplomatic relations between the U.S. and
the new regime.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

To mark Israel's 67th Birthday, I am reposting the moving story of Moshe Kahtan, one of the last Jews to be smuggled out of Iraq before the outbreak of the Six-Day War. Israel has always dedicated itself to rescuing Jews in distress, wherever they might be. The post is dedicated to the unsung Israeli heroes who secretly helped engineer Moshe's escape, and the escape of thousands of other Jews in the 1970s through Kurdistan.

Moshe Kahtan

Moshe tells the dramatic story of his escape from Baghdad in this film by his son David.

Moshe feels he owes his life to Israel. A man called Yossi, disguised as a Bedouin, helped organise Moshe's escape by boat to the Iranian coast and paid bribes to all the key officials on the Iranian side of the border.

Moshe and his wife Dominique now live in Israel.

Here is Moshe's story, as summarised in the synagogue newsletter by Barbara Saunders of Sutton Synagogue. The film was shown there on 29 April 2012.

"Moshe
was educated in England, but by returning to Iraq in 1965 to be with his
sick father, he fully understood that he would not be able to leave.
His passport was confiscated on arrival.

"Although his English
degree entitled him to become an officer, his Jewish status meant that
his degree would not be recognised. Compulsory conscription was
accompanied by sweeps of those without service papers, who could simply
disappear in prison. One day an army truck crashed into the back of his
car and though the colonel admitted fault, on discovering Moshe’s name,
he blackmailed him. Eventually Moshe had to make the hard decision to
go.

"Moshe calculated that each time he tried to prepare the way
to put his affairs in order, such as selling his home, he had to deal
with thirty different officials, each expecting a bribe or bakshsish.
However, as the paperwork was only valid for a month, he repeated the
whole procedure about three times. Eventually, he managed to arrange a
necessary cholera injection, without the necessary travel documents, and
flew to Basra on the border with Iran. The plan was to hire a boat as
though he were taking a small trip on the lake, then meet a boat that
would smuggle him over to Iran. However, the smuggler did not show up
until very late.

"Although Moshe was eventually picked up, the
authorities were alerted, gave chase and opened fire on the launch,
which fortunately was faster than the police boat. He was smuggled
across the water after an ordeal which lasted five and a half hours
instead of ten minutes. “We were just part of the commodities.”

"Sadly,
the smuggler was identified by his boat and he was arrested, tortured
and hanged.

"On arrival in Iran, Moshe was interviewed by a
colonel who acted courteously, just demanding that he sign a statement
explaining why he had to leave Iraq. On the first day of the Six Day
War, the Iraqi secret service came looking for him at his home in
Baghdad, as they did to many other Jews who were imprisoned and
tortured. Nine Jews accused of spying for Israel were given a show trial
and publicly hanged. The film is dedicated to the memory of these nine
men, aged between 20 and 60 years old, who were murdered in Baghdad on
27th January 1969.

"Moshe reflects on the behaviour of the
Iranians then and now and the malleability of the human mind, that is so
easily brainwashed, just as the German population were by Hitler,
including the cream of the intelligentsia, many of whom were in the SS:
philosophers, poets and doctors. Moshe concludes that he owes his life
to the State of Israel, which is where he feels he belongs and where he
and his wife Dominique now live."

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Singapore's first chief minister was David Marshall, of Iraqi-Jewish extraction. Even today, on the anniversary of his death, residents of Singapore from all religions pay their respects to him. Article in Y-net News (with thanks: Michelle):

A serious crisis took
place in Singapore after World War II, and few Jews remained in the
country: Only 150 out of several thousands, most of them Iraqi Jews from
Baghdad, who lead the community to this very day. Since then, the
community has grown significantly and numbers some 1, 500 men and women
today (including the Israelis and Jews who arrive for a short relocation
period for business purposes).

The community is mostly Orthodox, wealthy and very inviting. Slowly,
over the years, the community grew and expanded thanks to people who
arrived from all over the world, including several thousand Israelis who
are sent to Singapore every year by their workplaces on missions or
special projects.

The
Elias building which belongs to Singapore's rich Jews and has been well
preserved by the government (Photo: Ayelet Mamo Shay)

The few Jews who remained in Singapore after the war stood out. For
example, David Marshall, who was a successful Jewish lawyer and served
as Singapore's first chief minister from 1955 to 1956. To this very day,
on the anniversary of his death, many residents from a wide spectrum of
the country's different religions pay their respects to him.

In 1965, when Singapore gained its independence and split from
Malaysia, Israel was one of the few countries which helped the new
republic. Singapore's residents are still grateful to Israel to this
very day, and the Israelis are very popular in the country.

The community is led by Rabbi Mordechai Abergel. I met with him in
his modest office after a comprehensive security check at the entrance
to the community building. He has been serving as the community rabbi
since 1994, but although more than 20 years have passed, it seems that
his vigor and positive energies have only increased over the years.

The rabbi is very involved in everything taking place in his
community, and keeps it united by holding joint Shabbat meals and
communal events during the Jewish holidays. The highlight of the year is
the Lag B'Omer bonfire, which brings together 700 people.
Rabbi Abergel also serves as the community's slaughterer. He
slaughters the poultry himself in a bid to keep the prices low and
reasonable for kashrut observing consumers. The rabbi believes that
every Jewish home, wherever it is, should observe kashrut, and therefore
only the cost price is charged for the chicken. The beef, on the other
hand, has to be imported from Australia, so its price in Singapore is
much more expensive.
The rabbi is also an authorized mohel but prefers not to take
any chances, so most new parents privately book a mohel from Israel for
their son's circumcision ritual.
There are two active synagogues in Singapore, Chesed-El and Maghain
Aboth. The latter, which was built in the early 20th century, is located
in the community compound on Waterloo Street, which also includes a
ritual bath for men and a ritual bath for women, a kosher store which
offers a variety of products from Israel and around the world, and a
banquet hall which holds weddings, bar mitzvah, anniversaries and
workshops.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Walter Rauff, the inventor of the 'gas van' and a senior officer in Nazi occupied Tunisia, kept a detailed diary: it sheds light on arrangements for recruiting Jews into 24 forced labour camps. Following the defeat of the Wehrmacht at El-Alamein, Rauff commented that the Jews and the French were 'hopeful and happy' in hopes that the Allies would soon conquer Tunis. The Arabs were 'stressed and depressed'. Report in Y-Net News. (With thanks: Yoel)A new finding of the
diary kept by Walter Rauff, the Nazi colonel credited with masterminding
the "mobile gas chamber," sheds light on the Nazi conquest of Tunisia
that lasted from November 17, 1942 and up until 1943.
The high-ranking SS officer was one of three German
representatives who ruled Tunisia during that period. In his diary,
Rauff describes the various plans the SS considered for the Jews -
including using them has a human shields against approaching Allied
Forces.

Tunisia during Nazi occupation

Rauff's diary is a collection of reports and daily entries that
he sent from Tunisia to the Gestapo headquarters in Germany, and in them
he described what was happening around him.
Over the years, the diary was kept in London archives and
recently made its way to a documentation center for North African Jews,
and now has been translated into Hebrew.
"Today, Kesselring's order arrived to recruit Jews for the work
of building fortifications. In a meeting that took place with the acting
commander, we agreed on how to fulfill this order," he wrote.

Walter Rauff (centre)

"In the meantime, 3,000 Jews will be recruited by the operational
force. The arrival of the Jews to the work sites and their overseeing
will be the responsibility of the Wehrmacht (German forces). For this I
set up a committee of Jews that will be responsible for this process to
go smoothly.

"The first workers will be ready for work on the 7th of December in
the morning. I gave in order to mark all the Jews that are coming to the
work force with a yellow star. The financing, concern for food and
sleep will be done by the Jews themselves, without strain on the German
authorities. I announced that if the orders will not be completed,
severe reprisals should be expected," wrote Rauff.

In December, 1942 the high-ranking German officers gathered for a
crucial meeting. The topic was the draft ordinance for Jewish personnel
for the benefit of the German army in 24 forced labor camps across the
country. Thousands of Jewish youth were sent to these camps.
A few years earlier, Rauff had been involved in the invention of
the "gas van," a type of truck transformed into a mobile gas chamber
and used to annihilate Jews and others. It was the precursor of the gas
chambers in concentration camps, and some 200,000 people are believed to
have been murdered in this way.
In November, 1942, the
German-Italian forces, under the command of Erwin Rommel, were defeated
by Allied Forces in a battle known as "Al Alamein." Their defeat
prevented a second advance of the Axis forces into Egypt.
In the meantime, US forces had landed in Morocco and in Algeria as
part of "Operation Torch" and began to advance from Algeria toward the
border between Tunisia and Algeria.

In order to prevent a situation in which German-Italian forces
became trapped as they retreated from Libya, the Germans decided to
place numerous forces in Tunisia in order to create a wedge between the
incoming American troops advancing from east to west. This is how
Tunisia fell into the hands of the Germans.
Tunisia was the only Islamic country that came under direct German
occupation. During the six-month conquest, Tunisia was swept with war on
two fronts in the south and the north. Constant shelling took its toll
on the Tunisian people.

At the head of the Tunisian occupation stood Rauff, who commanded the entire Gestapo and deployment groups.

"Rauff did
not operate based on feelings and did not trust anyone," says Dr. Haim
Saadoun, who studied and translated Rauff's diary.
"He tries to become the central figure to determine German
policies in Tunisia, and does so in a strategic and organized way, with
the assumption that Germany will win the battle in Tunisia and by doing
so save the entire North African front for the Germans and the Italians.
"He is a rationalist, organized and extemely sophisticated. He
does not hurry to carry out his plans. He puts aside time to learn and
build Germany's policies and his place in Germany's hierarchy."
On November 25, 1942, Rauff expressed concern that the Jews and the French were conspiring against the Nazi forces.

"The atmosphere in the city is more hostile than on previous days.
The French and the Jews talk openly and say that in a short time enemy
forces will conquer the city. The atmosphere among the Jews and the
French is happy and hopeful, in contrast to the Arabs, who are very
stressed and depressed. (My emphasis - ed) The military situation, naturally, is completely
overshadowing the political situation."

Nine days later, Rauff sent another report, in which he came out
against the plan of Rudolf Rahn, who served as a German diplomat to
Tunisia. Rahn requested to turn the Jews into a sort of human shield
against Allied forces that were expected to reach the state.
"Today Rahn brought up in a meeting with the general the
possibility of deporting 70,000 Jews to the west, towards enemy forces. I
greatly warned against immediately putting this measure into practice,
because this type of move would fail in every respect.

Tunisian Jewish men taken to forced labor camps

"I proposed that in the meantime the Jews should be marked. The
decision has not yet been made, as it seems that the time has not
ripened for these steps and they will cause unrest that German forces
will not be able to handle," he wrote. Two days later it was decided to
send the Jews to forced labor camps.(...)

Tunisia during Nazi occupation

Yigal Halamit, who lives in Jerusalem today, was 12 years old at
the time, and living with a family in Tunisia. "I remember that there
was almost no food, I would stand every day for hours in a line in order
to get bread."
"Our neighbors were kicked out of their home, my uncle was taken
hostage and overall we lived with twice the fear – on the one hand the
Germans, and on the other the aerial bombings by the Allied Forces that
devastated the city. We had to go sleep in a store with a basement
because there were no shelters then. The Germans took all the Jews over
the age of 18 to work camps, among them my two older brothers."
(Clement ) Hori (a Tunisian Jew), also wrote in his diary about the recruitment of the Jews
of Tunisia to labor camps and describes the meeting of the recruitment
committee during which Rauff demanded that the Jewish community levy the
cost of the equipment, food and wages of the Jewish workers.
"The prescribed amount is 20 million a month and the wealthy
Jews were required to band together and take care of collecting this
amount in order to satisfy the immediate demands. It seems that their
demand was made and carried out," Hori wrote in his diary.
Hori also wrote of a young worker who disappeared one night, and
arrived the next day after being captured while hunting and taken to a
work camp. "He also said that 500 people were given only five water
bottles and that everyone got one bun for dinner, each worth one penny.
They spent the entire night outside, under the hood of the sky and
pouring rain. Simply horrible! Barbarianism that fits the 15th century
and we are living in the 20th!"

On the second week of December 1942, both diaries depict the German decision to ban Jews from owning radios.
Rauf writes in his diary on December 12: "According to the
command of the supreme commander, today the ban begins on radio devices
for the Jews, except for the radios of Jewish Italians. This move is
being carried out smoothly, with the support and help of the French
police. The confiscated devices are available to the German forces."
The confiscation of the radios had two purposes, says Dr.
Saadoun. "One was to prevent the Jews from hearing what is going on in
Europe and the second was to enable the Germans to stay up-to-date on
what is happening on the North African front, through BBC coverage."
Halamit added: "There were huge placards in the street that called on
all Jewish males to register. My father and mother were very worried
about the fate of my brothers who had been sent off - we had no contact
with them. There were people from the community who took care of food
for them and they sent us reports on my brothers' fate. About what was
happening then in Europe we had no idea, we had no clue. I personally
found out only two years later. I was shocked, we were all in
astonishment."

The subject of the Jews – as much as it was important to the Nazis,
became less significant to the Germans as the Allied Forces made their
way closer to Tunisia.

Their prime concern was their inability to combat the Allied Forces,
keep their commitments to Italy and their relationship with the French
government and the Arab Tunisian Government, which continued to function
in Tunisia.

In his diary, Rauff described the Arab population and its cooperation
with the Nazis. "In the border regions the atmosphere is similar to
that in Tunis: The French community assumes that the enemy forces will
arrive soon and are awaiting it; the Arab community is friendly towards
the Germans and is willing to help."

"The Arabs that we took to accompany us on the drive from the
airport to the city were immediately released when we arrived, and they
were given instructions to continue with their old ways, discover the
general atmosphere and send us the addresses of the Jews whose homes and
cars would suit our needs. The recruitment of Jews for work had a
positive impact on the atmosphere in the Arab sector."

The cooperation of the Arabs was not enough to help the Germans, who
were eventually defeated by the Allied Forces. At the end of March 1942,
Rauff sent his final reports to the Gestapo commander in Germany – just
before he escaped with the rest of the high-ranking officials in
Tunisia.

Rauff made his way to Milan, Italy about two months before Tunisia
was liberated from German occupation, but was caught by the Allied
Forces. In December 1946, he managed to escape from a prisoner of war
camp and was hidden at a monastery in Rome.

He succeeded in fleeing Italy, and in 1948 he was drafted into the
Syrian intelligence service. Rauff lived in Damascus for a year, before
moving onto Ecuador and eventually settling in Chile.

Extradition requests submitted by the Federal Republic of Germany in
1963 at the request of the Simon Wiesenthal Center were turned down by
Chile. The Chilean Supreme Court declined on the grounds that the
country's laws applied to the crimes Rauff was accused of committing,
and that the statue of limitations had expired.

Monday, April 20, 2015

The death has been announced of the great 1960s singer Richard Anthony, aged 77.

Born Richard Btesh in Cairo, Egypt, he was that rare phenomenon, a French singer who managed to become equally successful across the Channel. He recorded 600 songs - 21 reached No.1 in the charts - and sold 50 million records.

There was 'J'entends siffler le train', 'It's my party', 'Let's twist again,' If I Ioved you', 'Itsy Bitsy Bikini'. (Try as I might, I could not find a single hit that was not a cover for another performer.)

His father Edgar
Btesh came from Aleppo in Syria. He was a textile manufacturer in Egypt, but Richard's mother Margaret was British from an Iraqi- Jewish family. Her father was the British honorary consul in Alexandria, Samuel Shashoua Bey.

Richard had a privileged childhood in Egypt but his family was forced into exile by rising nationalism. They first lived in Argentina and then moved to England: Richard, aged 9, was sent to the prestigious Brighton College. He was a soloist in the school choir.

You may be surprised to learn that in 1966 he recorded 'Zionist lyrics' to this song - more familiar to the English-speaking world as 'California Dreamin' - and renamed it 'La terre promise'(The promised land).

The story is not well known of how mostly Jewish underground resistance fighters in Algiers helped the Allied forces land on the north African coast without a shot being fired. Adi Schwartz writes for i24 News:
It all seemed like a Hollywood fairy tale: around
midnight, a few hundred young men spread across the city, aiming
towards governmental buildings and the army barracks. They were
untrained, and most of them never held a gun before. Some of their
rifles didn't even have bullets. Their target, no less, was to take over
the city and neutralize the entire French army.

The date is November 1942 and the location is Algiers, where the
American army is about to disembark in order to fight the German armies
in North Africa. In the city itself, a coup d'état takes place by a
Gaullist underground, comprised mostly of Jews, who tries to facilitate
the American takeover of the city. In one of the more surreal chapters
of World War II, a tiny and unorganized army of volunteers managed to
fool 20, 000 French and Axis soldiers.

I

Imperial War Museum/Wikipedia"A
British Crusader III tank crosses a ditch at Mersa Matruh, Libya during
the British 8th Army's pursuit of the retreating Axis forces, November
1942"

The plan was simple: allied forces would land on the coast of
northwestern Africa, controlled by Vichy France, and the underground
would take care of paralyzing the regime's troops in order to hand over
the city to the Allies. The underground presented fabricated orders from
the Vichy General Staff, stating that soldiers in central institutions
must be replaced by civil guards.

This allowed hundreds of underground members to take over the post
office, the commissariat, the communications room and the commissioner's
house, and the bewildered Vichy soldiers simply made way for them.
Their commanders, including Vichy leader Philippe Petain's deputy, were
taken into captivity without a single shot being fired. The chain of
stunning events included a Jewish man impersonating a French general and
ordering through the radio the entire army to surrender. Eventually, as
day broke out, the Americans arrived and took over the city.

This untold drama is recounted in the film "Night of Fools," to be
aired on Thursday in Israel during Holocaust Remembrance Day. The story
remained practically unknown since nobody was interested in including it
in the historical narrative: the Americans had no desire to share their
victory, and the Vichy French were reluctant to be embarrassed by this
episode. Historians, on the other hand, devoted most of their time and
energy to studying the Holocaust in Europe.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

It's time to banish the discourse of invented ethnic identities to the dustbin of history, writes Dr Seth Frantzman in the Algemeiner in the wake of the resurgence of the supposed 'ethnic demon' behind Likud's election victory (with thanks : Lynne T)

A scene from the film Sallah Shabati, a parody of Mizrahi immigrants to Israel

The fallout from the Israeli elections have produced an unprecedented
outpouring of stereotypes and racist statements in the media. The ones
that got the most attention abroad were those directed at Arab voters
by the Prime Minister. But another real problem remains unresolved in
Israel: The visceral hatred and contempt that many “Ashkenazi” or
European-origin Israelis have for “Mizrahi” Jews, and the way that the
media exacerbates racial stereotypes by repeating them without
self-critique.

When the election was over and the results had shown that Netanyahu’s
Likud had gotten 30 seats in the Knesset, an outpouring of rancor began
on social media. Someone was to blame. Like in all nationalist
societies – and Israel is a nationalist society on the left and right –
the blame must be directed at a group. In Israel one doesn’t blame
“Likud voters” but rather an ethnic scapegoat called “Mizrahim.”

Larry Derfner at the website +972 asked “what’s an Ashkenazi Leftist
to do?” He wrote he was “referring only to poor, generally
under-educated Mizrahim who make up the base of Likud supporters.” He
asserted that “Israeli leftists…are disproportionately Ashkenazi.” He
claimed “Israeli leftists say we have to treat the poor Mizrahim as
equals.”

In no other democracy in the Western world would a
self-described “left wing” person wonder about the need to treat others
as equals. Equality is at the basis of a liberal, leftist, and
progressive outlook.

Following on the heels of the Derfner piece was one by Avi
Issacharoff at the Times of Israel entitled, “Why did Bibi win? Because
he speaks fluent Mizrahi.” He claimed that “Mizrahim are celebrating
their ‘victory’ over the Ashkenazim in the recent elections.” Just as
Derfner had argued poor Mizrahim were racist, Issacharoff claimed that
many people of Mizrahi origin have “xenophobia, particularly towards
Arabs.”

These authors and many others invent a stereotype of poor racist
“Mizrahim” that are responsible for the election of Likud. No one
surveyed Likud voters to see how many are actually “Mizrahi.” In fact
many Likud voters come from areas that are wealthy and middle class,
like my own neighborhood of Rehavia, where at least 25 percent voted
Likud. Are Likud voters more racist towards Arabs than Zionist Union
voters? Did anyone take time to poll both groups and ask?

On a TV program, a former professor was invited on after he had
bashed Mizrahi voters on his Facebook account. He told a Moroccan woman
on the show that “nothing bad would have happened if your parents had
stayed in Morocco and rotted there.” Another campaign on Facebook was
started to “punish” poorer towns in Israel by not giving charity to
them. Guy Spigelman, CEO of the NGO PresenTense asked after the
election in an article in Haaretz, “Why should we feel extra
responsibility for the education, health and welfare of all Israelis?”
There aren’t words to describe how wrong that is.

Some Israelis are trying to search for a scapegoat for Netanyahu’s
victory. Some of them who define themselves as left wing, “Ashkenazi”
and progressive have painted a stereotypical picture of “the poor” as
“racist.” It is as if to be born white and from a European family
automatically makes you better in Israel, despite the fact that Baruch
Goldstein, Meir Kahane, and most of the virulent racists in Israeli
history have also been European-origin Jews.

It’s time for Israelis to banish this discourse to the dustbin of
history. Haven’t Jews been scapegoated long enough without reflecting
that hate-mongering tool inward?

Ashkenazi and Mizrahi are invented identities, born of a misreading
of Jewish history. There were European Jewish families from Egypt and
Sephardic Jewish families from Amsterdam who came to Israel; there is
mass intermarriage. There are more than a million Russian-origin Jews
in Israel; Ethiopians and Druze; and some of them vote Likud.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

The author, Yossi Sucary, writing in + 972 Magazine, takes a sarcastic (yet poetic) swipe at the Israeli establishment for daring to suggest that the plight of Libyan Jews during WW2 was a figment of the Oriental imagination. The Jews who ended up in Bergen Belsen were those with British passports. All are thought to have survived. It is an exaggeration to say that 'thousands of Libyan Jews were massacred by the Nazis' - several hundred died in camps like Giado, but most casualties were a result of the bombing, mostly by the Allies.

I wanted the believe that the Nazis’ bullets, which struck the heads
of my mother’s 12 and 13-year-old cousins with frightening precision,
accidentally missed the history books of the State of Israel.

I wanted to believe that my grandmother, who was taken from the
blazing heat of the Sahara Desert, where she lived as a free and loving
woman, on a three-year journey that ended in Bergen Belsen concentration
camp in snowy Germany, could not be contained in the pages of history
of the State of Israel, because her feet were simply too lazy to take
her to the Education Ministry and tell the people there about it.

I wanted to believe that I learned, over and over again, about the 49
people who were murdered during the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, but I
didn’t learn a thing about the thousands of Jews from Libya who were
massacred by the Nazis in the Jado, Gharyan, Said al Aziz, Bergen Belsen
and Birenbach Reiss concentration camps, all due to a silly mistake by a
lowly clerk in the Education Ministry of the State of Israel.

I wanted to believe that my mother’s cries, who for years woke up
crying in the middle of the night, in a mix of Arabic and Italian,
fearing that the Germans were coming to take her, were not heard by a
single writer of history, only because it was too soft, and it is her
fault that she did not cry louder.

I wanted to believe that when Nachum Goldman, the President of the
World Zionist Organization, rejected my aunt Saloma, who asked to
receive reparations after her young son was shot at point-blank range by
the Germans, he did so because he truly believed his own words: “You
have never seen a German in your life, you have an Oriental
imagination.”

In fact, I wanted to believe that Israel was not interested in
erasing the history of part of its citizenry, but rather was interested
in changing what was said about it. This is why I wrote my book
“Benghazi—Bergen-Belsen” on black pages — the kind that the State cannot
easily scribble on.

Friday, April 17, 2015

An Israeli journalist who recently visited Iran has been accused of being a spy by an Iranian MP, and has clearly embarrassed the authorities. Orly Azoulay travelled on an American passport with a delegation from the New York Times, but did not conceal her identity. Report in Y-Net News: (with thanks: Ahuva)

Orly Azoulay's recent reports
of her visit to Iran have caused quite a stir in the Islamic Republic,
which has come out against Ynet's print-publication Yediot Ahronoth's
"Zionist emissary who managed to enter the country under the noses of
the authorities."

Armed with a visa issued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and without
making any efforts to conceal her identity, Azoulay went to Iran as
part of a delegation organized by the New York Times - and was warmly
welcomed by her hosts.

Orly Azoulay in Iran (Photo courtesy of Orly Azoulay)

After leaving the country, she described her visit in a report
published over the Passover holidays, telling of her time in Tehran, her
visits to a synagogue in Isfahan and the tomb of Queen Esther in
Hamedan, and various other experiences in the country.

The report has now sparked an outcry in Iran, with the media and
social networks filled with discussions on how and why Azoulay received
permission to visit the country.

The members
of the Jewish community of Isfahan won't discuss Netanyahu's speech to
Congress and are adamant in their loyalty to the state. 'We don't talk
politics,' they say.
On Tuesday, the Lenziran video website published an extensive report
on the subject of the "Zionist journalist," charging that Azoulay's
reports are false.

"She has no business here other than espionage," said one Iranian
member of parliament who appeared in the Lenziran report. "The question
is: where is our intelligence system?"

The report also described how the various Iranian government
ministries are trying to blame one another for the "oversight." And
according to the report's presenter, "Azoulay's entry into Iran is like a
virus entering the human body."

Orly
Azoulay finds herself watching Netanyahu's Congress speech from the
lobby of an Iranian hotel, and encounters a country desperate for a deal
that will free it from crippling sanctions.

In response to Azoulay's article, the spokesman for the Iranian
Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Hossein Nooshabadi, said she
had "entered Iran on an American passport, she didn't have a press card
and came in as a tourist, an American resident with an American group –
the Foreign Ministry and intelligence services must therefore provide an
answer."

Video (Hebrew) shows Orly Azoulay visiting the tomb of Esther in Hamadan where 15 Jews remain, and the synagogue in Isfahan where one member sings a song wishing for peace between the peoples of Iran and Israel.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

It is not widely known that Jews were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp from Libya. Barely three years later, the Jewish community of Libya was ethnically cleansed. The lessons of Bergen-Belsen were not learned in 1945, and still have not been today, with the proliferation of Nazi-inspired, anti-Jewish Islamist groups. Lyn Julius writes in the Jerusalem Post:

Holocaust survivors returning from Bergen-Belsen to Libya

On April 15, the world marked the 70th
anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp.

More than 50,000 prisoners, mainly Jews, died there
– of starvation, overwork, disease or following gruesome medical
experiments. Anne Frank was probably the most famous victim. She and her
sister perished of typhus in the camp just one month before
liberation.

Among the prisoners liberated on that glorious day in
April were several hundred Libyan Jews, deported to Bergen-Belsen via
Italy. A photo exists of these survivors, dangling their legs out of a
railway carriage on which they had scrawled, “Going home” and “Back to
Tripoli.”

According to The Jews of Libya by Professor Maurice
Roumani, some 870 out of the 2,000 Jews in Libya with British passports
were deported to Italy as part of the “sfollamento” policy to send
away foreign nationals. Members of the same family could be dispersed
to Morocco, Tunisia or Algeria – then under pro-Nazi, Vichy French
control.

Two transports of 300 Jews, and another 120, were shipped from
Libya to Naples on cargo trains to Bergen-Belsen and arrived on May 25,
1944. Jews arriving from Libya in Bologna were taken by train to
Innsbruck- Reichenau, part of the Dachau camp system, in July 1943.

Reaching
Bergen-Belsen relatively late in the war, the Libyan Jews survived.
Some were exchanged for German POWs. They received packages from the
Red Cross and obtained some relief in their working conditions. They
even managed to keep kosher, exchanging cooked food for dry bread. One
Jew, Zion Labi from Benghazi, started a school.

The deportation
of Jews from Libya to the northern shores of the Mediterranean gives
the lie to the widespread misconception that the Holocaust touched only
European Jews.

Although their suffering cannot be compared to
the horrors inflicted on the Jews of Eastern Europe, Jews in North
Africa were not spared the impact of the war. Some 2,500 Libyan Jews
were shipped by the Italian Fascist regime to the notorious Giado labor
camp. One fifth died of typhus or starvation.

Neighboring
Tunisia came under direct Nazi control for six months. Some 2, 000
Tunisian Jewish men, wearing the obligatory yellow star, were
frog-marched into labor camps. Jews were used as slave labor in
Algerian and Moroccan work camps. And all the while, thousands of Jews
died in aerial bombardments as the Allied and German armies wrestled for
control.

Arguably, North African states, having not yet
achieved independence, were not responsible for the anti-Jewish
measures adopted by the Vichy regime and the Italian fascists. But
apart from individuals who saved Jews, the sympathies of the Arab
masses broadly lay with the Germans.

Iraq, independent since
1932, was the scene of a pro-Nazi coup in 1941, leading inexorably to
the Farhud, the Iraqi-Jewish Kristallnacht. In this two-day orgy of
murder, rape, mutilation and looting, up to 600 Jews were killed,
according to British archival records. The exact figure will never be
known.

The Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem played a central
role in plotting the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq. In exile in Berlin from
November 1941 until the end of the war, he broadcast anti-Jewish
propaganda to the Arab world.

He proved more zealous than the
Nazis in promoting the “final solution” to the Jewish question. The
mufti is thought to have been directly responsible for 20,000 European
Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust.

At the end of WWII, the mufti should have been tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg.

He
was indicted, judged and convicted by Yugoslavia for crimes against
humanity, arising from his pivotal role in the Handschar and Skandeberg
SS divisions which deported Balkan Jews from Kosovo, Macedonia and
Thrace. But the Allies shrank from offending the Arabs. The mufti
remained a hero for tens of thousands.

Nazi Germany lavished
money and propaganda on the Arab world in the hopes of fomenting an
anti-colonial uprising. It funded the Muslim Brotherhood, established
in Egypt in 1928. Its founder, Hassan al-Banna, made the Nazi concept
of the Jew as the epitome of all-embracing evil, overlaid with
traditional anti-Jewish Koranic prejudice, the core of the Brotherhood’s
ideology. By the war’s end, the Brotherhood had a million members.

Shortly
after the Belsen survivors had returned to Libya, the Jews of Tripoli
and outlying villages suffered a vicious threeday pogrom, which claimed
the lives of 130 and made thousands of Jews homeless.

How was
this possible barely six months after news of the terrible extermination
of the Jews of Europe had reached the Arab world? The November 1945
Libyan riots were a spillover from disturbances in Egypt in which five
Jews were murdered. While some blame the clash of Zionism and Arab
nationalism, historians report that the rioters in Libya did not shout
anti-Zionist slogans. The mob did not even know what Zionism was, a
Jewish Agency report stated. It is noteworthy that the Egyptian
rioters, incited by the Muslim Brotherhood, targeted Coptic, Greek
Orthodox and Catholic institutions as well as Jews.

It is common
to view the mass exodus and spoliation of a million Jews from the Arab
world as revenge for the displacement of Palestinian Arabs in 1948. A
more plausible explanation is that Nazi-inspired blood-andsoil
nationalism, and xenophobic Islamism, which had entrenched themselves
in the Arab world over the preceding decade, aimed to destroy, or at
best, exclude non-Muslim minorities from public and political life.

In
1947 the Arab League drafted a plan to treat their Jewish citizens as
enemy aliens, before a single Palestinian Arab had fled.

Barely
three years after the end of WWII, Arab League member states emulated
Nazism with their Nuremberg-style laws, criminalizing Zionism, freezing
Jewish bank accounts, instituting quotas, imposing restrictions on jobs
and movement. Violence and the threat of violence did the rest. The
result was ethnic cleansing of age-old Jewish communities in a single
generation.

The ghost of Nazi-inspired, anti-Jewish bigotry was
never exorcised: after WWII, the Arab world gave safe haven to Nazi war
criminals on the run. They became military advisers and spin-doctors
of Jew-hatred.

Adolph Eichmann, Nazi architect of the “final
solution,” hoped his “Arab friends” would continue his battle against
the Jews, who were always the “principal war criminals” and “principal
aggressors.” He hadn’t managed to complete his task of “total
annihilation,” but the Muslims could still complete it for him.

Not
only has the virus of Nazi anti-Semitism never left the Arab and
Muslim world, it has grown exponentially. Muslim immigrants have
carried the virus of Jew-hatred back into European countries. Saudi
petrodollars have financed the spread of Islamism, with its implicit
anti-Semitism, worldwide.

Eichmann would have been pleased to see
that the Arab world is effectively judenrein: there are no Jews in
Libya, and no more than 4,000 in the rest of the Arab world today. The
Muslim Brotherhood, and its local Palestinian branch Hamas, al-Qaida,
Islamic State and assorted Islamist groups still carry the torch for an
ideology born in the Nazi era.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Why have more Arabs not been nominated as 'Righteous Gentiles'? the answer, at least in Khaled Abdul Wahab's case during the Nazi occupation of Tunisia, is that Jews were sheltered with the knowledge of the Nazis and involved no personal risk to him. The Times of Israel reports:

Abdul Wahab (pictured) was twice nominated to Yad Vashem for the honor, in 2007 and 2010, and twice rejected.

According to Robert Satloff, author of the
landmark 2006 book, “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the
Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands,” it is a “sordid story of Yad
Vashem applying criteria to this case that it has failed to apply in
other cases. Regrettably this is not Yad Vashem’s finest hour.”

“Among the Righteous” opens with the simple
question, “Did any Arabs save any Jews during the Holocaust?” The book
and a follow-up 2010 PBS documentary reflect Satloff’s scholarly and
personal journey in searching for Arab involvement in the Holocaust —
Arab villains, heroes, and those in between.

Robert
Satloff, author of the landmark 2006 book ‘Among the Righteous: Lost
Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands’ (courtesy)

“In the course of research for this book, I
came to the sad conclusion that there are two main reasons that no Arabs
have been included among the list of the ‘righteous’ — first, many
Arabs (or their heirs) didn’t want to be found, and second, Jews didn’t
look too hard,” wrote Satloff.

Abdul Wahab’s wartime deeds are recounted in
“Among the Righteous” by the Jewish Middle East historian after he
heard testimony from Weisel’s sister, Anny Boukris, who was also hidden
by Abdul Wahab at age 11.

In conversation with The Times of Israel
Tuesday, Satloff said he is “always impressed by how many Arabs ask me
about” Abdul Wahab. Many have difficulty understanding why he has been
honored by other Jewish organizations, but not by Israel.

Abdul Wahab’s daughter Faiza, who only heard of her father’s wartime experiences after the publication of Satloff’s book, said in a 2010 Ynet interview, “My father opened his home to Jews and Yad Vashem did not open their home to us.”

Head of the Righteous Among the Nations department Steinfeldt explained that part of the criteria for deciding who is eligible for the title relates
to the question of whether the nominee saved a Jew from deportation or
threat of death under risk of death or imprisonment, with altruistic
motivations. All this must be affirmed through detailed Jewish witness
testimony or, in rare cases, other documentation, such as police records
of arrests.

Most are nominated by those rescued or their
children, and Steinfeldt’s multi-lingual staff of 10 begin the process
of verifying their eligibility. The file is prepared, which takes on
average a year, and given to the Yad Vashem commission, which is headed
by a Supreme Court judge, for debate.

In the case of the North African countries,
said Steinfeldt, during the “German conquest, the occupation was so
short there wasn’t time to implement the Final Solution.”

Therefore, she explained, there is a
smaller likelihood that there would be Righteous Arabs from these parts,
“not because the people were different, but because the circumstances
were different.”

Families didn’t have to hide, said Steinfeldt,
and though some Jews stayed with Muslim countrymen, it was done in full
knowledge of the Nazis.

“Jewish families were thrown out of their
homes and hosted by local Arabs. They were not hiding, but hosted,” she
said. “The hosts didn’t do anything illegal.”

In the case of Abdul Wahab, Yad Vashem’s
Steinfeldt said, “as much as his deeds were admirable” in hosting Jews
at his farm, he broke no law and the Germans knew of their stay.

Additionally, according to testimony Yad
Vashem received from Satloff’s source Boukris, “the men continued their
forced labor service under German supervision, and on Thursdays, to
prepare for Shabbat, the family would join the other Jews of Mahdia who
had been evicted from the town and concentrated on a Jewish-owned farm
in Sidi Alouan,” close to Abdul Wahab’s estate.

As explained by a Yad Vashem spokesperson, the element of personal risk is a clear criteria for the Righteous Among the Nations status.

“If the Germans knew about – and checked on –
the Jews who were staying with him, the element of extraordinary risk is
clearly lacking,” she said.

The Muslims in Europe were a different case,
said Steinfeldt. For example

, Yad Vashem has granted the title of
Righteous Among the Nations to many Muslims from Albania, the only
European country that ended WWII with more Jews than it began with due
to its famous protection of the up to 1,800 Jewish refugees who joined
the country’s indigenous Jewish population of 200.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

This is the story of Benjamin Doron, whose childhood was shattered by WWll. His mother died of typhus, his father was imprisoned as a 'British collaborator' for four years till the end of the war, and an uncle died in the notorious Jado (Giado) camp in the Libyan desert. Doron was one of five Jews allowed an immigration certificate into Palestine in 1946. Here is his deposition at Yad Vashem (with thanks: Nitza):

My name is Benjamin Doron. My father’s name was Morchai or Mordechai Dadosh.

My mother’s name was Diamantina; her nickname was Mantina.
Let me tell you about my grandmother, who played a central role in my
childhood. Her name was Henriquette or Regita Arbib (Nadjari). She was
my mother’s mother. She was born in Saloniki, and from there she went
to Alexandria in Egypt to visit her brothers.

She met my grandfather who was there on business. Later they married and came back to live in Benghazi.

I feel more connected to the name I adopted when I came to Israel after
the War of Independence, which is Doron. When I was living with my
parents, my name was Dadosh.

Father was a worker at the port of Benghazi. He worked there until the
first occupation of the British. We weren’t rich, but we were not poor
either. My mother was a housewife. We were three children, my brother
Amos, my sister Rachel and I. I was the eldest.

Benjamin Doron aged ten and (right) as he is today

My grandmother lived in the Eastern part of the city, which bordered on
the Muslim quarter, and we lived in the Italian quarter of Benghazi, on
the third floor of an apartment building. Our toilets were inside the
building, but where Grandmother lived, the buildings were older - from
Turkish times - and all the facilities were outside. She lived there
with her son, Herzl, my uncle, who was 17. She had to work to make a
living to look after herself and her unmarried son. She ironed shirts.
Most of the Jews lived in the new city and a few from the older
generation lived in the old part where my grandmother lived. There was
no Jewish ghetto. Grandmother had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. Some
of her friends came from Greece, and Malta. In the synagogue everyone
was the same. There were four synagogues and everyone prayed in the
Sephardic tradition.

School

The Jewish children went to the Italian Jewish school, where there
were three classes. Some non-Jewish Italian-speaking pupils also went
to our school. I started to go to school when I was 7, but at the age
of ten and a half, the Second World War started and the school closed.
I don’t recall or know of any specific anti-Semitic incidents at
school. After school some of the children went to learn limudei kodesh
(religious studies), at the Talmud Torah. I went at the beginning, but
discontinued later, I don’t really know why.

The promenade in Benghazi, Libya, 1939, called Lungomare Mussolini

Part of our curriculum in January, February and March 1940, was to
learn about fascism! We even wore the black or grey uniform of the
Fascist Youth movement and sang Fascist songs. I remember when
Mussolini visited Benghazi in 1935. He arrived in the main square on
his horse and met with officials.(...)

There were about
3,000 Jews in Benghazi at this time. After 1938, with the advent of the Racial Laws, all Jewish-owned shops
and our school had to be open on Shabbat. The Chief Rabbi told us not
to go to school and we asked non-Jewish people to open the Jewish-owned
shops on Shabbat.

During WWII

My last school report was from April 1940 and this was the end of our
schooling and the beginning of the trouble. Regular schooling for all
children in Benghazi ended in April.

The first British occupation began at the end of 1940 but life continued
more or less normally. There were no changes in the daily family
routine. Receiving the British army was a cause for rejoicing. As
children, we use to get small additions in food like jam, and bread but
we weren’t hungry at this point. There were a lot of bombings, and my
uncles had no work.

Now according to grandmother’s story, the British authorities tracked my
father down as someone who had worked in the port and since they wanted
to operate the port, they got him to get things moving in the port for
them. He got the other workers to report for work. Boats began to dock
and nothing was missing at home. My uncles, who were tailors, had a more
difficult time since they were not receiving many orders, but I don’t
think that they were missing the basic commodities.

We lived on the third floor of a long block of flats with four or five
entrances, and when there were bombings we went down to the shelters.
One could run across the roof of the whole long building and descend to
the street from the last steps in the building, but more of that later
in the war.

In the spring of 1941, the Afrika Korps (German expeditionary force),
led by General Rommel, arrived and pushed the British army out, ending
the first British occupation. There were some Italian soldiers attached
to Rommel’s army as well. This was the beginning of a much harder period
for us. Firstly someone informed on my father to the Italian judicial
authority as having collaborated with the British in helping to open the
port for their use. He was tried in an Italian court and sentenced to
twelve years' imprisonment for aiding the enemy. During this entire
period it was impossible for us to see him or visit him.

When the Germans entered the city, it resulted in looting and hooligan
behavior on the part of the Italians against Jewish shops and I remember
this clearly. I saw it from the windows of the flat on the third floor -
Italians rampaging down in the streets.

We never saw father again until after the war. He was never prepared to
talk about this period. He did tell my brother that he suffered during
this period and he saw difficult things but he never elaborated on this
general statement. He was taken to Tripoli and from there transferred to
Italy on a troop carrier, and jailed there.

Our mother fell ill with typhus and died and we remained with our
grandmother who looked after us as orphans. She moved into our apartment
with Herzl our uncle, because it was on the third floor and therefore
safer than the ground floor where she lived. We would use the water hole
that she had in her courtyard because of water shortages, and it became
my responsibility to walk to her home to fetch water for use in our
flat. Life became harder, the city was very dirty and lice became a
problem to be dealt with. Food wasn’t as plentiful as before but I don’t
remember actually feeling starved. You could get basic foodstuffs. We
stayed at home most of the time and the only time I went out of the
house was to fetch water and to go to synagogue on Friday night and
Saturday morning.
Grandmother sold off her private jewelry from time to time in order to
support us, and it appears that this was sufficient for us to buy food.

You must remember that there were also aerial bombardments so we did not
move around a lot. When there were bombings at night, and it was too
dark to go out, and there were no alarms to warn us of the incoming
bombs, I remember that my grandmother would tell us to each stand in a
corner, and to say “Shema Yisrael”[1],
and to just wait. It was war for us, meaning limited movement, some
hardships, fear but nothing unbearable. The Jews remained within their
community and didn’t experience anything really bad at this stage except
for the racial laws.

At the end of 1941, beginning of 1942, the British pushed the Germans
out and we received the British army again with rejoicing. However this
period didn’t last too long. During this period we met some soldiers
from Palestine who were serving in the British Army, but not many.

Again in 1942, the Germans returned for the second time and Mussolini
ordered the Jews to be expelled from certain areas in Libya, and they
had to congregate in Benghazi. The German governor together with the
Italian governor demanded the creation of lists of all the Jews in
Benghazi that the Rabbi and the community leaders refused to supply. We
didn‘t know where they were being sent. And then a Jew called Docha
made the lists for the Germans and these lists were posted in the
synagogue. The Jews listed had to appear at a certain meeting point on a
certain date, from which they were taken away in trucks.

We knew nothing about the fate of the Jews elsewhere although at this
time, some Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in Benghazi and the
Jewish community helped them with the basics, such as bread, beans and
water from the well etc., but shortly afterwards they were sent back to
Europe and I don’t know what happened to them.

So every few weeks, a few trucks with Jews were loaded up and taken away
and we didn’t know to where. For some reason, we were at the end of the
list, although some of my uncles from my father’s side were trucked out
in the first convoy.

Page of Testimony of Mordekhai Burbea, a Libyan Jew sent to Bergen Belsen

Slowly Benghazi became a ghost city with only about 250 Jews left. This
was a very difficult period because the city had emptied out and it was
very difficult to find provisions. Non-Jewish French and British
citizens began to leave and return to their countries, and Jews of
French nationality first went to Tripoli and were sent to Tunisia, and
those of British nationality were sent to Italy and from there some were
sent to Bergen Belsen.

At this point we began to suffer from starvation. I became
responsible for gathering food, even from the German army, like remains
of jam from tins, but it wasn’t enough.

Most of the houses and shops belonging to Jews had been broken into.
Grandmother then had an idea that I should go into broken-down houses
and look for food, which I began to do, and I succeeded in finding
enough food to keep us afloat: beans, tomatoes etc.

Only once do I remember that German soldiers shooed me away from near their head- quarters.

Concerning bodily ablutions, I was responsible for emptying out the buckets,
cleaning and bringing water back from Grandma’s well near the sea. I was
the only one who left the house of the five of us. Twice a day, morning
and night I did this.

One day, around August or September, we finally had to leave on one of
the trucks. Grandma prepared a load for each one to carry – a little
food, blankets. When we reached the main road to Tripoli, a German
roadblock stopped us and returned us to the city. We were told to get
off the trucks and we headed for Grandma’s house near the sea. When we
got there, her Arab neighbor said it was better for us to stay only one
night and to leave the area of the city for a certain village further
out, probably because of the aerial bombings. He had already sent his
own family there. So the next day we started out and my sister and I
remember resting and sleeping in the Jewish cemetery on the way out of
the city.

By evening, after walking the whole day, we arrived in the
small village made up of mud huts with all the activity centered around
the watering well. The Arab neighbor accompanied us to the village since
his own family was there and we remained there until the end of the
war. We were given a small single room wooden hut and subsisted on the
basics that the Arab neighbor would bring to Grandma every so often,
such as bread, beans, water from the well. As before, her manner of
paying for his keeping us alive was with a piece of her jewelry from
time to time.

We were the only Jewish family in the vicinity and were under his
protection, until the beginning of 1943 when Grandma told us to gather
our belongings, and we returned to Benghazi to both houses, which had
been broken into.

Life after WWII

The British army was now back with soldiers from India and New
Zealand and they were generous in what they gave us to eat, to keep us
alive, such as jam, yellow cheese, and tea. We settled into the third
floor flat.

My uncle, who was seven years older than me, took over the reins.
This is where the soldiers from the "Jewish Brigade" of the British army
arrived, speaking Hebrew and looking for the Jews. The Jewish soldiers
guarded us, giving us food, and they organized a school for us, one
class with forty, or fifty kids until the remnants of the Jado (Giado)
camp[2]
started returning. And then they started opening extra classes. You
have to imagine that what days before had been a ghost town was now
transformed under the British influence and especially the Jewish
soldiers into a different reality with education restarting, books,
pencils, blackboards and everything being held in Hebrew. The school was
called a Talmud Torah and this way the British had no problem in
allowing ‘religious instruction’. They were all in soldiers’ garb and
amongst other things were teaching Zionist ideas with songs. I remember
the stamps of the Keren Kayemet with pictures of Ein Harod and other
kibbutzim and clearly this was part of imparting ideas about Israel. We
began to speak in Hebrew, and I spoke Hebrew with my brother, and
learned arithmetic in Hebrew. Some of the soldiers remained illegally to
continue teaching us but a young man called Skolnick had started
training local people to take over the brunt of the educational
endeavor.

There was also the phenomenon of fictitious marriages between soldiers
and local girls so that they could enter Palestine ‘legally’ and some
local youths who were even dressed in British uniforms with the army
‘pass’ of Jewish soldiers who remained behind in Benghazi. Some of the
Jewish soldiers met and married Jewish girls from Benghazi.

One of my uncles, my father’s brother, named Benjamin Dadosh, was the second Jew to die in the Jado Camp. (See Page of Testimony).
My uncles told me that people died there from starvation and disease.
There wasn’t a family who didn’t have someone who had died in the camp.

Emigrating to Palestine

Document
issued by the British Military Administration in Cyrenaica, Libya, in
lieu of a passport, to Benjamin, in 1946, to allow him to immigrate to
Palestine by boat. The back of the document shows the stamps by the
Government of Palestine, Department of Migration, when Benjamin arrived
in Haifa on July 31, 1946.

In 1946, five entry certificates arrived from Palestine to school in
Libya. I was one of the students given a certificate. I still have a
copy of it. I don’t know if there was a draw, or how I got one, but
they said they took good students from the higher classes. Around the
same time, a boat containing cows arrived from Palestine. The boat was
called “Aliza”.

In 1946, I sailed to Palestine on the Aliza, with the cows, and began my
new life. The five of us from Benghazi went to the Youth Village in
Ben Shemen. The other people there looked at us strangely as they had
never seen Jews from North Africa before. All the staff came from
Germany, and they didn't know who we were, and didn't know how to look
after us. Soon they saw we were polite, and we spoke Hebrew. They
decided to send us immediately to agricultural school and integrate us
as soon as possible.

We didn't know anything about physics or
chemistry, but after three months, we sat and learned everything:
physics, chemistry, mathematics. We had a problem with music,
especially classical music, as we hadn't heard music for three years,
all throughout the war. We also didn’t know anything about art; we had
never heard that pictures could “speak” to you.

Follow by Email

Click picture for Facebook page

Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)